Of Pancakes, Promises, and Coloring Books
by Pemas
Summary: Modern day AU. Korra babysits her cousin Meelo while Tenzin and Pema have a very much needed time-out for once.


**AN: Let's just say Meelo is the firstborn and currently only child of Tenzin and Pema for the sake of this fic. :) I'm warning you that I've never written something that includes a kid and I don't know if this is accurately what kids Meelo's age normally act. Welp.**

**I do not own any of A:TLA and/or LOK.**

It is 6:00 PM, Saturday.

"Can you imagine it, honey? Firstborn child and we already look so beat-up." Pema sighs and checks her purse one more time. She turns to Korra and pecks her on the cheek. "Thank you so much for doing this, dear. Call us if you need anything."

Korra laughs a little and maneuvers the couple to the door, briefly hugging the twosome (putting on a frown upon Tenzin's long beard; meant to be funny) and assuring them they'll be safe. Pema reminds her they'll be back around nine. "Everything will be _fine_. No worries. Now go and have a fantastic time." She shoos them away into the bright streets playfully and waves goodbye until their backs are in her sight.

When she latches the front door shut she huffs, then grins when Meelo toddles into the room. "Mommy? Mommy, where are you?" Meelo has his stuffed "polar bear dog" in his arms, yawning and rubbing his eyes a tad too fast. And when he doesn't see his dear mommy and not even Korra the expected watering of the eyes commences. "MOMMY? DADDY?" He whimpers, cries very, very _loud_. What did you expect?

Korra chortles, "Meelo Meelo Meelo Meelo Meelo…" This always happens and is part of the procedure when she babysits, and she almost snorts at her own cousin's adorableness. Meelo's tears stop flowing in their tracks down his cheeks immediately like some God-given faucet is turned off and his wail is cut off. He looks straight, directly to the door, like a deer in the headlights. Meelo doesn't like the door because "that's where people go out after they say bye-bye." But he should remember that it's where people come in too. That's where big cousin Korra is standing by now.

"KORRA!" He is in a fit of uncontrollable giggles. How is this even possible? One second before he was tragically stuck in a snot-flowing spree with his stuffed polar bear dog decidedly named Mrs. Naga ("She's married! I just don't know who the lucky guy is… yet!") and now he's waving his favorite babysitter (a memorable favorite because "Naga once told me she likes you and whoever Naga likes, I like. Plus you understand _our ways_.") his outstretched hands. Korra heaves the little boy up in her (strong – _thank God_; Meelo grew thrice since the last time she saw him) arms with scarce difficulty and she spins them around their lovely and happy center in the living room "like a merry-go-round." And Naga is in Korra's other hand because "she _has _to be one of the magical animal seats, just right in front of us so she'll know where we are."

"Put me down." Korra obliges and gently lands Meelo on the carpet. Without a beat he is – almost – back to his previous mood, sans the snot and wailing but with a pinch of a funny authoritative tone in his voice. "Where's mommy and daddy?" He searches the living room again but stays steadily in his place.

Meelo then looks pointedly at her like _he _is her babysitter and she does everything she can to stifle a laugh. She crouches down so that they can see each other eye to eye. "Mommy and daddy are out just for this evening, Mr. Put-Me-Down. I will be your guardian for tonight."

At the word "guardian" Meelo's face lights up and his exuberance is highly dangerous. "NAGA, NAGA, DO YA KNOW WHAT THIS MEANS?" He excitedly looks around and escapes his babysitter. He convulses his polar bear dog and she swears his bottom lip is quivering. "WE''RE GONNA HAVE SOME FUN 'CAUSE COUSIN KORRA IS HERE." He takes in a gulp of air rather dramatically and runs like it's the end of everything mindlessly, once climbing his way onto the beige couch and jumping with big, sparkling eyes only a kid like Meelo can acquire.

Taking her cue, Korra steps into his show of incitement and he shakes himself into a cute stare when he notices her scrutiny and enormous smile (which mirrors his but is less fanatic). He cuts her off when she's about to tell him something. "WE SHALL SAVE LIVES but first we must nap."

Korra shakes her head and releases an immense laugh but carries a fast asleep Meelo into his room.

* * *

><p>"Korra. Korra?" Korra is driven awake. It takes a moment for her to see things clearly, and the first thing she sees is Meelo looking at her with tears in his eyes.<p>

"Oh, Meelo." She scoots closer and sits up, her cousin crawling onto her lap with Naga and a blanket. His cheeks are wet – actually most of his face is wet, and Korra wipes all the tears away using the hem of her shirt. "Bad dream?" she coos.

"Yes." He closes his eyes. His dreams were usually about winning dragon fights but he lost this time and Naga died.

It takes encouraging whispers and a little singing from Korra for him to recover and soon his whole face is dry, but undoubtedly he looks sad.

Korra formulates an idea.

She cranes her head and says, "Hey, hey Meelo." He's staring into distant space and she's amused with the way the mention of his name brings him back. "You wanna do something?"

He chews on his blanket, his eyes drowsy, Naga falling off his grasp. But then he perks up and gets interested. "Do what?"

"Are there still fireflies hiding in your backyard?" She shovels him up and down onto the space beside her. "You wanna catch 'em?"

This – _this _– is what carries Meelo out of his current state. He pounces on her and flails his hands everywhere, flinging his blanket elsewhere. He begins his usual rambles of almost incoherent words when Korra again intercepts.

"And if we catch a decent number, I'll make you pancakes."

Meelo's eyes shine bright and it is so worth it. He rambles again and Korra can't stop rolling her eyes, and then he stops, saying in a timid voice, "But I don't think mommy and daddy keep pancakes around the house."

"Fear not, my young Meelo slash Mr. Put-Me-Down," Korra says, and adds in a quieter tone like they're being spied on. "Wait here."

She scrambles down and almost steps on Meelo's blanket, but she successfully grabs onto the backpack she brought with her that afternoon and is about to head back to the room when she sees Meelo closing the door and shuffling to scoop up Naga from the floor. She sits down on the couch and does her best to look all sneaky.

Meelo's eyes get even bigger. "What's that for?" He lifts a finger to the backpack.

"Guess what I have in it, Meelo." He strokes his imaginary beard and once again Korra swallows back a laugh with much difficulty because it is so… Tenzinesque. Gah.

He eventually quits and shrugs, but he doesn't look away from the enigmatic thing that is _the backpack_. Korra sighs, pretending to look annoyed. But the grin that etches her face next when she displays the box betrays her, because Meelo's grin is ever infectious.

"PANCAAAAAAAAAAAAAAKES."

* * *

><p>An hour of trapping a couple of fireflies in a jar tires both the babysitter and the one being babysat. Korra turns the electric fan on in the living room where Meelo hugs his jar of fireflies and ogles at the TV. It is 7:30 PM, and Korra is suddenly conscious that she's treating a kid with pancakes as dinner and it might not be the best idea. But she shrugs it all off when Meelo says, "Mommy and daddy feed me icky, green stuff a lot. They look like trees, but way smaller and less tasty, I think."<p>

The smell of a plate of pancakes wafts through the air and when Korra pushes open the door to the dining room and Meelo's head turns on autopilot. She had set the table earlier, so when she sets the tower of supposedly breakfast food on the placemat Meelo is salivating over it with the largest set of eyes Korra has seen that day. Meelo's nose crinkles and the sides of his mouth tug up in an appreciating smile. Korra makes sure he's comfortable with his seat and the utensils and he only nods because his mouth has never been more stuffed before with syrup-dipped pancakes.

When Meelo swallows he strikes up a conversation, half because he wants to spend the silence talking to his cousin and another half because his curiosity is murdering his mind. "Korra, is Mako still your boyfriend?"

Korra chokes on the bite of ham sandwich she has in her mouth. She carefully dabs the her lips with tissue and carefully chooses her words. "Who told you that?" She and Mako are friends, and will only remain friends. Period.

Meelo looks like he's chewing furiously on his dinner and his eyes are angry; this makes Korra shrink and choke again at the same time. "So he isn't your cutie pie?"

Korra commands herself not to vomit her sandwich because A. she doesn't want to prepare another one and B. she might take Meelo's appetite away. "Cutie pie?" She demands, licking her lips.

"Ain't he your cutie pie? Mommy calls daddy 'cutie pie' every day, and I'm assuming it's because she loves him. Don't you love Mako? I like Mako, he _also _understands _our ways_." He pats Naga on the head.

At this Korra groans and she doesn't know if she really had in front of Meelo or she only did groan inside her head. One time she paid Tenzin, Pema, and of course Meelo a visit to deliver a package from her parents which is actually from a distant relative. Mako and her were on their way to the movies – _as friends! _Her apparently anti-social classmate/_the jerk_ surprised her by showing up at her front door (and you _can't _believe how her father pestered him with unthinkably big questions and how her mother kept smiling at him and smirking at Korra), so he went with her to Tenzin's (which is fifteen minutes away; thank God Mako isn't a girl and/or a whiner) and she dealt with the parents while he hung back and played with their little baby Meelo, who isn't really much of a baby.

"No, he isn't my boyfriend," Korra convinces Meelo, and it sounds shockingly false to even her own ears.

"Promise me you will make him your cutie pie." He has his puppy eyes etched across his face and Korra frowns him down fondly.

"I'll think about it, mister." She desires to steer the conversation away, but she gives Meelo a minute to smile and eat more. After a while she says, "Does Naga already have a sure husband?"

He begins to utter something when he holds back, chewing and swallowing with an amusingly funny face. He has an annoyed look on his face. "No." He squints at the polar bear dog. "I think she wants to be on her own for now."

Korra just smiles at that, wolfs down her meal, and chugs a glass of water.

* * *

><p>After dinner Korra makes Meelo sit in front of the TV again and watch; he doesn't complain. She takes her of everything on the table and washes them all, before adjusting her ponytails and joining Meelo on the couch.<p>

They're watching this cartoon about this alternative universe where people can bend the four elements. Korra hasn't understood everything yet, but she thinks she likes it.

"Hey, Korra." Meelo is sitting rapt as a waterbender with hair loopies does her thing.

"Yes, Meelo?"

"Wouldn't it be cool if _our _world was like theirs, too? You know, like we could bend and all?"

Korra mulls it over and opts to nod her head. Yet right after she does, the weirdest thing happens to her – a life that isn't hers and feels like it is flashes before her eyes, a world so close to the one in front of her. It leaves her breathless and questioning, but she shakes her head as if to agitate the vision away. But it stays anyway.

* * *

><p>"KORRA."<p>

Korra blinks and hides a yawn. Always hide a yawn from Meelo; he'll think you're literally _tired of him_. "What?"

"FORT. Let's make a blanket fort!" The idea glimmers in his eyes.

"You want to build one on the floor of your bedroom?" She's almost bashful that she's thrilled, too. But it's only her and Meelo, so she stands up and leads him to inaugurate a blanket fort.

They use a pair of towering stools as a part of their foundation. They then stuff a line of pillows around them and a blanket is laid on the floor and atop the stools – the blanket on top larger, blocking their view from everything else on the "outside world." This takes them a long time with the other construction worker never putting his stuffed best friend down. It's cozy inside Meelo's room, but it's cozier inside the fort. They crawl inside, with Korra brining in the jar of fireflies, and the first thing Meelo does is stand in the middle and declare with utmost pride, "I hereafter assign this fort as FORT MIRROR."

Korra quirks her eyebrows. "Why FORT MIRROR, sir?"

His butt hits the nearest blue pillow. "Because it sounds like 'Meerra' but in our accent. Meerra is like the British accent of mirror."

"But what's Meerra?" She lies down.

"Me and you! Don't you get it?" He looks down on her frenziedly. "Mee. Rra. Meelo and Korra!"

She sits up and says, "Alright, alright. I get it." Smiling, she adds, "Wait just a sec here, Mr. Smarty Pants.

Blanket fort nights with Meelo are special. She skips to get her backpack and sneaks a peek at the clock: 8:26. It depresses her because she wants to stay till tomorrow, but she manages to kick it out of her thoughts and veer her expression.

When she enters the fort she hands Meelo a book. It's a specialty and Meelo answers the questions on the tip of his tongue himself.

"YOU GOT ME A COLORING BOOK." She smiles at the fact that he doesn't why it's extra special, but he soon gets it. He comes at her like a bullet. "HOW?"

He leafs through the pages – fifty to be exact – and follows each and every illustration of himself and his family. He points at a lone page of him, carrying an expression of which he conveys now, and his mouth is open in amazement, his teeth almost in Korra's face.

"I drew them and ta-da!" It was a genuinely long process, longer than drawing and magic, but it was worth it. She knew it would be worth it. Meelo cuddles closer. Later, he crawls outside, and Korra spies a mini box of crayons in his hands from where it was on multiple, already used coloring books.

He colors but he "doesn't want any help from you, or Naga." Some of his streaks are out of place or they pass the outlines and he tells himself it's okay because he's giving color to himself anyway and he would like to be bursting with colors.

Korra is proud of him.

"I'm tired, Korra," he says after he has accomplished four pages.

"Okay." She carries him out of the fort and tucks him into bed. She turns all the lights off excluding the nightlight on the wall next to them. They talk, talk, and talk till Meelo's eyes are too drowsy and it looks like he's chewing something in his mouth but he isn't. He's just tasting the fairy dust they tackled about.

"Korra?"

"Mmm?"

"I love you."

"I love you, too." Of course she loves her Meelo.

"Korra?"

She chuckles in the dark. "Yeah?"

"Again, promise me you'll bring Mako here next time. And make sure he's your cutie pie then." His fairy-dust-chewing comes to an end.

She sighs but smiles, kissing Meelo's forehead and shushing him. But she replies, "I promise."


End file.
